We’ve been keeping a close eye on Gameloft’s latest game, Sacred Odyssey: Rise of Ayden. The main reason for our obsession is because of how much the game reminds us of Nintedo’s The Legend of Zelda series. Gameloft finally released the game onto the App Store, but it released it in an unexpected way.

Sacred Odyssey: Rise of Ayden is the first game in Gameloft’s catalog to adopt a freemium model. Instead of releasing the game at full price and then releasing a lite version a couple of weeks later, Gameloft has decided to offer the game absolutely free and allowing players to unlock the full game through in-app purchase if they decide to continue the adventure. After playing the free portion of the game for nearly 45 minutes, I can say that this model seems to work rather well as the Gameloft gave a good amount of content to possibly reel players in to unlock the full game.

Freemium has been becoming increasingly popular among mobile publishers as it allows them to publish a single title that serves as both the lite and full version if the player decides the title is worth their hard earned cash. Many well known publishers have offered freemium titles for some time now, but a big name publisher like Gameloft adopting freemium might spark interest for freemium to be used by other big name publishers, depending on how well Gameloft does with it. This means less lite versions of titles will populate the AppSstore, less unnecessary space being taken up on iOS devices, and possibly better sales as it’s much easier to click on “Unlock full game” when you’re in the middle of an adventure than paying for the app in the App Store.